Who Can Really Say?

Late last summer NYT Public Editor Daniel Okrent took on the question of whether the Times was a "liberal paper" and answered "Of course it is." At that time he promised a review of the paper's campaign coverage, and he kicks that off in today's paper. He spends the bullk of the essay on what I'll call the eye off the beholder problem. Okrent's email it seems, is proof positive (to paraphrase Lincoln) that you can't please all of the people, all of the time.

SEPTEMBER 26, re "Kerry as the Boss: Always More Questions": Faith C. McCready thinks "the Kerry campaign ought to be paying The Times a consultant/advertising fee" for the article. Scott Libbey of Chevy Chase, Md., calls it "another negative article on Kerry," and concludes: "I don't know how you guys can look at yourselves in the mirror anymore. I really don't."

October 5, regarding a few stories: From Michael Malone of Darien, Conn., "I know that many of the Times reporters and editors are breathlessly trying to get Kerry elected." And from John Owens of San Francisco, "I often won't read your paper because of the relentless pounding on Kerry."

Al Markel of San Francisco asks why The Times hasn't reviewed the anti-Kerry "Unfit for Command" while Samuel Leff of Manhattan wonders why Justin Frank's critical psychoanalytic study, "Bush on the Couch," has been ignored by the Book Review editors. Francis Moynihan of Avon, Conn., congratulates The Times's Web site for "finally, a headline critical of Kerry" that uses the word "pander"; John Owens objects, saying that "a comparable headline about Bush would read ' ... according to the poll Americans find Bush to be a liar and an idiot.' " I'm tempted to refer all these correspondents, and the many hundreds of others they represent, to my colleague Mike Needs, ombudsman of The Akron Beacon Journal. "On Monday and Tuesday," Mike wrote in an e-mail last week, "my calls were all from conservatives saying the paper leaned left."

It's a truism (or ought to be) that our opinions and conclusions are influenced by subjective bias.

Conservatives thought Cheney won the vice-presidential debate; liberals thought Edwards did. I can look at pictures of my children and see that they are flawless; you will see them differently (even though they are, of course, flawless). Write a book, get a lousy review - it's happened to me several times - and you challenge the reviewer's judgment, not your own. We see, and we are more vulnerable to, those things that matter most to us.

All well and good for setting the stage. He says he'll follow up with more next Sunday, but ends the column (tellingly?) with this [bold added]:

This piece turned out to be more of a rant than I intended, but given the vicious nature of some of the attacks levied against certain reporters, I wasn't inclined to be temperate. There are many critics of The Times's election coverage who are measured and reasonable, and their views - very different from my own - will be represented in this space next week. I also don't wish to discourage readers who in good faith find errors, misrepresentations or unfair characterizations. They may occur randomly, but their frequency is disappointing, and I'll continue to forward meritorious complaints to the appropriate editors and reporters. Many will find expression in the corrections column, or in this one.

But before I turn over the podium, I do want you to know just how debased the level of discourse has become. When a reporter receives an e-mail message that says, "I hope your kid gets his head blown off in a Republican war," a limit has been passed.

That's what a coward named Steve Schwenk, from San Francisco, wrote to national political correspondent Adam Nagourney several days ago because Nagourney wrote something Schwenk considered (if such a person is capable of consideration) pro-Bush. Some women reporters regularly receive sexual insults and threats. As nasty as critics on the right can get (plenty nasty), the left seems to be winning the vileness derby this year. Maybe the bloggers who encourage their readers to send this sort of thing to The Times might want to ask them instead to say it in public. I don't think they'd dare.

So there!

And Mr. Schwenk? He seems to be involved with the local Boy Scouts in San Fran. Oh, you won't find his name on that page, but if you click on the Contact List link on the left, you'll find him all right. As it turns out, he's not biased, you see -- it's everyone else that's biased! Well, that certainly clears everything up. No messy eyes or beholders either.

And speaking of rants (and beholders, and eyes) what a strange place to find a response to Okrent.